Subjects in English : From Valency Grammar to a Constructionist Treatment of Non-Canonical Subjects

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Subjects in English: From Valency Grammar to a Constructionist Treatment of Non-Canonical Subjects 4 Preface 8 Contents 10 Abbreviations, symbols and frequently used labels 16 List of Figures 18 List of Tables 20 1 Introduction 22 Aims 22 Brief account of the theoretical background 22 Research questions and hypotheses 24 2 Theory 26 History of the term 27 The beginnings 27 Treatment in reference grammars over the past 100 years 29 The role of the subject in generative grammar and in valency/dependency grammar 37 Generative grammar 37 Early generative grammar 38 GB and Minimalism 42 Generative Studies endorsing the subject concept 46 Summary 48 Valency models 50 Basic tenets 50 Criticism and multi-level approaches to valency 52 The role of valency in grammatical models 54 Note on the present study 56 Towards a definition of subject in English 57 Sentence/Clause 57 Criteria 58 Use of terminology in this study 71 Summary 73 3 Methodological Considerations 74 English 74 Data 74 A Valency Dictionary of English (VDE) 77 Corpora 77 Representativeness 77 Size and noise 79 Annotation 83 Native speaker interviews 86 Acceptability/Grammaticality 87 4 Clausal Subjects in active clauses 92 Data analysis 92 VDE data 92 Corpus evidence 94 Restrictions identified 96 Problematic cases 98 Summary 99 Native speaker data 99 Case study: modality and non-extraposed [to_INF] subjects 102 Theoretical background 103 Presentation of data 104 Interpretation of the data 107 Conclusion 110 5 Analysis of subjects in passive clauses 114 Short theoretical introduction 114 Analysis 117 Passive clause subjects as subset of active clause complements 118 Passive clause subjects not found in the active clause 121 Complement occurs only as passive subject 121 Possible influence of other valency carriers in the clause 126 Prepositional passive 132 [to_INF] vs. [V-ing] 136 Conclusion 141 6 Analysis of subjects in copular clauses 144 What counts as a copular clause? 145 Theoretical treatment of copula verbs and copular clauses 145 Data Analysis 150 Adjectives and extraposed clausal subjects 151 [that_CL] but no [to_INF] 152 [to_INF] but no [that_CL] 155 Nouns and extraposed clausal subjects 159 [to_INF] vs [that_CL] 160 [V-ing] 167 Case study: adjectives and non-extraposed clausal subjects 170 Case study: nouns and non-extraposed clausal subjects 174 Special case 1: of importance 178 Special case 2: image 179 Conclusion 180 Summary of results 181 Theoretical implications 184 7 Extraposition 190 Theoretical treatment 191 Extraposition vs. dislocation 194 The problem 194 Evidence 196 Conclusion for the present study 198 Obligatory extraposition 199 What is the subject? 208 Survey of different positions 209 Criteria for subjecthood revisited 210 Summary 220 Syntactic properties 225 Extraposed to which position? 225 [that_CL] with and without that 227 Factors influencing extraposition 230 Weight/Processing 230 Information packaging 233 Factivity 235 Register 238 Type of complement 239 Type of valency carrier 241 Valency carrier 242 Other complements/valency pattern 247 Case study: tough movement 249 Conclusion 256 8 Existentials 258 Phenomena covered 258 Limitation to there-clauses 258 Existentials vs locative there-clauses 260 Survey of structures 262 Bare existentials 263 Extended existentials 263 Relative clause extensions 265 Infinitival extensions 265 Participial extensions 267 Extented existentials vs. bare existentials with postmodified or complemented [NP] 268 Presentational existentials 272 What is the subject? 273 Theoretical treatment 284 Postverbal [NP] in extended existentials as subject of a small clause? 284 Heavy [NP] shift 285 Simplicity 285 So-called ‘predicate restriction’ 286 [NP]s which resist conversion into a clause 287 Issues of agreement 288 Further studies 291 Proposed structure 294 9 Conclusions and perspectives for syntactic models 300 Data for linguistic analysis 300 The concept of subject 306 Problems of diverging subject properties 306 Consequences for modelling ‘subjects’ 309 A universal category? 314 Summary 315 Perspectives for grammatical models 316 Item-specific selection of subjects 316 Valency 319 Valency patterns 319 Long-distance dependencies and multiple valency carriers 327 Tough movement 327 Passives and small clauses 332 Limitations 334 The bigger picture 335 Conflicting determinants 336 A cognitive approach 338 Summary 348 References 350 Dictionaries 364 Corpora 364 Index 366 Appendices 372 Table of Contents 373 Appendix 1: List of clausal subjects with active verbs in the VDE 375 Appendix 2: List of clausal subjects with active verbs with added corpus results 379 Appendix 3: Native speaker judgements on clausal subjects with convince 382 Appendix 4: Native speaker judgements on clausal subjects with persuade 386 Appendix 5: Native speaker judgements on clausal subjects with annoy 390 Appendix 6: Native speaker judgements on clausal subjects with offend 392 Appendix 7: Native speaker judgements on clausal subjects with upset 394 Appendix 8: Native speaker judgements on clausal subjects with amuse 396 Appendix 9: Native speaker judgements on clausal subjects with please 398 Appendix 10: Native speaker judgements on clausal subjects with confuse 400 Appendix 11: Native speaker judgements on clausal subjects with shock 402 Appendix 12: Native speaker judgements on clausal subjects with surprise 404 Appendix 13: Native speaker judgements on clausal subjects with puzzle 406 Appendix 14: Sentences with pre-verbal [to_INF] classified for modality 408 Appendix 15: Corpus evidence for passive clauses 454 Appendix 16: Sentences with extraposed [that_CL] classified according to position of [that_CL] 465 Appendix 17: List of adjectives that allow a [that_CL] but no [to_INF] extraposed subject according to the VDE 483 Appendix 18: Native speaker judgements on adjectives with extraposed [to_INF] subjects 484 Appendix 19: List of adjectives that allow a [to_INF] but no [that_CL] extraposed subject according to the VDE 491 Appendix 20: Native speaker judgements on adjectives with extraposed [that_CL] subjects 492 Appendix 21: Native speaker judgements on nouns with extraposed [to_INF] subjects 507 Appendix 22: Native speaker judgements on nouns with extraposed [that_CL] subjects 510 Appendix 23: Native speaker judgements on nouns with extraposed [V-ing] subjects 514 Appendix 24: Native speaker judgements on non-extraposed subjects with adjectives starting in h 519 Appendix 25: Native speaker judgements on non-extraposed subjects with nouns starting in i 521 Appendix 26: List of active verbs with [to_INF] subject with and without extraposition according to the VDE 524 Appendix 27: Social information on native speaker informants 526 The purpose of the book is twofold. First it tries to give a descriptive account of subjects in English. The second aim is to elucidate the status of the subject both as a concept in grammatical theory and with regard to the question whether the subject is determined by item-specific arbitrary formal restrictions in the same way as postverbal complements of the verb have been shown to be.